


Not my father's son.

by gooseontheloose



Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: Abuse, Angst, Character Study, Cheating, M/M, Past Child Abuse, Wordcount: 1.000-5.000, short and not so sweet
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-25
Updated: 2020-02-20
Packaged: 2021-01-02 17:36:05
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,017
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21165500
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gooseontheloose/pseuds/gooseontheloose
Summary: John Laurens always swore he would never become his father.He always looked like every bit his mother’s son, but inside (where it matters) they were nothing alike.It's hard to just be yourself when you've been numb your whole life.John Laurens struggles to define himself (and is more like his parents than he'd like to admit)





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Just banged this out in like an hour, let me know what y'all think.  
Themes getting a bit bloody personal here...

John Laurens always swore he would never become his father.  
He was always looked like every bit his mother’s son. Same black curls, same sharp glinting eyes, same brown skin.  
But inside, inside they were nothing alike.  
His mother was brave and driven, the kind of woman who never complained, but always got it done. But also, his mother was all soft edges and kisses on the forehead, his mother was generous, with her time and her love. His mother was perfect. His mother was beautiful, inside and out.   
He'd never describe himself like that.  
So he didn’t compare himself to her. Didn’t compare himself to her goodness and her wholeness, maybe he was seeing it with a rose tint anyway. Doesn’t every six-year-old think their mother hung the moon in the sky. Aren’t you supposed to only say nice things about dead people.  
His father smacked him around the jaw once when he asked that. His father always used to say “When your mother left you”, as if she’d had any choice in the matter. John questioned it, then wished he hadn’t. He learnt a very different lesson that day.  
Maybe that was something good about his father. Every smack and yell and punch and throw and crack showed him where he stood. Every single time it taught him a lesson. A lesson he wouldn’t be likely to forget any time soon.

So he doesn’t define himself as his mother’s son, or his father’s. He’s his own person. John. Not really a name you can shorten so he redefines himself other ways.  
He makes himself creative, something neither of them ever had the knack (or in his father’s case, the patience) for. He draws and draws until he gets good, then draws some more until he gets great. He’s John who’s creative, always got his head in the sketchbook, always with paint on the cuffs of his sleeves.  
He makes himself funny. He talks too loud, tells too many jokes. Neither of them were ever funny. His mother made him smile, but she never told a joke. Not one that he can remember for the whole six years they walked the same earth. His father told jokes, but they weren’t meant to make John laugh. They were meant to make him cringe, make him shake. Never make him laugh.  
He made himself care. That was the hardest one to crack.  
Years of missing the perfect wholeness he lost, years of splintered danger, of walking on egg shells, of a lump in his throat that never quite went away, because he was always nervous and jittery and on edge (on the edge of tears). Years of being told he wasn’t enough. Wasn’t worth the clothes on his back. Told he was too this, too that, too much, too little. Years of the words being branded onto his skin by angry fists that forced him downwards, said “this is your place”. Years of being treated like less than. It would be enough to make anyone numb.  
Making himself care should’ve meant facing it all, meant falling apart and piecing himself back together, building up a better version of himself. He managed to skip that stage. He worked his way around it, because it doesn’t matter if you’re just pretending. Nobody else cares either way. So he attends marches and rallies and yells too loud and is too robust, too unmoving in the opinion he picked, because if the mask slips, even for a moment, people will realise he’s faking. And what then?

On one day when he’s pretending to care, surrounded by friends, who might be more than pretending, he meets Alexander. And Alexander cares enough for both of them. It works beautifully. It’s like they’re dancing to some song neither have ever heard before, but somehow they both know off by heart. Alexander laughs at his jokes, and gives quick witted responses, sharp and coiled. Alexander stands up for himself, impossibly brave. Alexander is fire and passion and righteous fury, and sometimes John feels like he’s just along for the ride. The ride of a lifetime, with a man who has more drive, more reason to exist and keep on existing than anyone that John has ever met. And it’s one evening, up in their apartment (the apartment they share because John is normal and he lives in an apartment with the man he might love, the man he does love, because why wouldn’t he love Alexander). Up in their apartment, Alexander is singing a song that’s blaring through the speakers, complete with gestures and moves, Alexander is cooking something, as John pores over his art, and he stops for a moment, and beams over at John, and he says something. Something that makes John’s heart stop for a moment,

“John, you know you’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me?”.

He’s heard those words before. He realises in that moment that for all of his efforts not to become his mother, he fell in love with her. Because Alexander is just like her, just as kind and smart and hardworking. And she used to say those exact words to him every night before bed. He doesn’t know what to do with that realisation, so he just copies Alexander’s beam.

“You’re such a dork Alexander Hamilton”.

Alexander rolls his eyes playfully, then goes back to whatever he’s concocting. Maybe the realisation was meant to make John feel lighter somehow, but he just feels like he’s swallowed tar, all sticky and frozen inside. But life goes on. He almost forgets that Alexander is just like her, well he pretends to forget. Pretending just about worked for everything else.

And they’re good. They’re almost perfect, until they aren’t. Alexander’s home late again. John scrubs the dishes in the sink, his knuckles white around the scourer, the sharp metal digging into his skin. He hopes it bleeds. Alexander pulls the front door open, his hat has a little dusting of snow on it, his cheeks reddened from the cold.

“Fuck it’s cold out there, makes me wish I was back home.”

“Where were you?” John marvels at how cold he sounds.

“I told you already, meeting Burr for the project” Alexander seems confused more than anything, not quite defensive yet. He unbuttons his coat, John watches his fingers work.

“And I told you already, I don’t believe you”

“Why wouldn’t you believe me then, Mr High and Mighty” Alexander’s tone is cautious, a lilt of teasing still there, despite John’s harsh tone. He’s trying to diffuse the situation, trying to make John crack a smile and mean that this can all be over. John doesn’t want this to be over.

“Because you’re a cheater Alexander”

“I beg your pardon”

“Please. Everyone says it, you cheated on the Schulyer girl, drove her back to London.” John steps closer to Alexander as he says this. He wants to see the look in Alexander’s eyes, wants to see it it’s true. Doesn’t know why he has to check. He already knows. He’s already sure.

“Wow. I didn’t realise my past relationships were suddenly up for discussion, me and Eliza were different, that was all so different-“

“Once a cheater always a cheater, isn’t that what they say? I know a pattern when I see one”

“And there goes the man who’s on marches outside prisons chanting to give people a second chance, where are your precious second chances now?” He was pretending to care then. It made logical sense for that the be the next protest. He was just pretending then. He’s not pretending now. Even he’s not that good of an actor.

“Second chance to break some one who loves you’s heart”

“Please John. You don’t love me. Sometimes I think you’re incapable of love. That scares me John. There’s something wrong with you and it fucking scares me. I’ll go where I please, I’ll do what and who I please-“

Alexander cries out a moment after John’s fist make contact with his jaw. And John should stop. He needs to stop, needs to get a grip, but his blood is boiling up, and he can’t breathe, can’t see right. Everything is red. He thought that was a myth, but here it is, everything bathed in the tantalising rage which is clouding everything up, making it all foggy, making his limbs lag a moment behind his brain.

“What the fuck John?!” Alexander is furious. He cradles his jaw with his hand “Fuck I think it’s fucking broken you maniac”

John hits him again, fist making contact with his stomach this time. Alexander doubles over. John hits again, in the exact same spot as the first time. Alexander crumples into the wall. He’s audibly sobbing, swaying back and forth. He doesn’t even put his fists up to protect himself or anything. God he’s fucking pathetic. John hits him once more, and he hits the ground, with a hollow kind of thud. He doesn’t get back up. John walks to the bathroom, still in a kind of rage drunk rage. He switches the shower on, peels his clothes off, and climbs in. It’s only when the water is drumming down, like needles on his skin, scalding hot, that he realises what he’s done.

Realises that he was his fathers son all along.


	2. Chapter 2

Alex tries to cover the bruises.   
He’s shaking and crying in the bathroom mirror, which is still steamed up from John’s shower. He doesn’t know where John is. It hurts him that he wants to know. Hurts him that he’s worried about where John is and if John is okay, when John just hit him. Oh god. John hit him.   
And all of a sudden he’s retching over the toilet and the pain in his lungs as he vomits, again and again, and the pain in his ribs and his face, smarting and fresh, is nothing compared to the pain inside. The pain that he feels when he thinks about the fact that John hit him. John said that he loved him, then John hit him. John knew about his father, knew about his history, and still John hit him. And not just once. John hit him over and over.   
And Alex swore that he’d never be that kind of person. No matter how much he loved his mother, he never forgave her for staying. Never understood why. Always secretly thought she was weak for staying with a man who laid hands on her. When he saw the bruises on her wrists, her black eye and the butterfly stickers on her brow, he felt pity, but he also felt shame, and scarlet anger, because what kind of woman stays with a man who hits her, who hits her kids. But he loved her more than all that, pushed those feelings aside, because they were irrational and wrong. He loved his mother, even though she stayed. He just didn’t understand.   
Now he does.   
Now he’s standing at the mirror, bruised and bloody at the hands of the man he loved, the man he still loves goddamn it, leaving is the last thing on his mind.   
He should go.   
He should crash at a friends house, figure where to go next.   
But he doesn’t want to.   
John is tender and kind. John doesn’t love him. John is sweet and presses butterfly kisses on his forehead every morning. John lost his temper. John makes Alex smile, makes Alex feel alive. John hit him. John hit him. John doesn’t love Alex but Alex loves John.   
So Alex stands in the bathroom mirror, and uses drugstore foundation to cover his bruises. He’s not going anywhere. There’s no one to see. It’s past midnight, the sky is dark, the world is sleeping. But it’s like if he covers them up, if he can’t see them in his own reflection, then it didn’t really happen. They hurt. It hurts.   
John doesn’t love him.   
John beat him bloody then left him all alone to cover up bruises in the frosted glass.   
But Alex stays.   
And God alone knows why. 


End file.
